Lab Solvents app for Android nearing completion

Another app is on its way for Android, called Lab Solvents. It’s not quite finished yet, but as you can see in the snapshot to the right, it is close. The new app is basically a fusion between the iOS apps Approved Drugs, TB Mobile and Green Solvents, built for Android.

In keeping with the current roadmap and strategy for the Android platform, the Lab Solvents app is to a large extent motivated by the objective of porting and refining certain core technology by way of producing relatively straightforward apps to get products into the hands of users. The new app borrows very heavily from the iOS interface that was designed for the Approved Drugs app and subsequently adapted to TB Mobile. The functionality of the app involves delivering information about laboratory solvents, with associated health, safety and environmental impact data. In this respect it is a modernised version of the Green Solvents app, which itself was put together very quickly as the result of a tweet by Sean Ekins.

The main screen of the app (above) shows a list of named chemical structures, presided over by a control panel along the top. The control block allows the list to be restricted to certain categories of chemicals (aromatics, hydrocarbons, alcohols, etc.) or to those with certain environmental properties (e.g. restrict the list to chemicals that are known to be environmentally benign or malignant), searched by name, or sorted in order of similarity to a user-provided structure.

In addition to presenting structure, name and physical properties for a collection of common solvents, and displaying the “greenness” ratings according to the ACS Green Chemical Institute, the new app adds in the analogous ratings that were made available in the GSK Solvent Selection Guide. These are shown in the detail view for a particular solvent:

The individual greenness properties (ACS and/or GSK where available) are shown graphically. The original ratings were given as a whole number between 1 and 10, but visually it is easier to view them on a chart-like scale, which is colour-coded such that green is harmless, red is nasty, and yellow is in between.

The app is almost finished, with just a few minor blanks to be filled in, so you can expect to find it on the Google Play store quite soon, where it will complement the MolPrime and ChemSpider apps that are already available.